Manufacturing something overseas because we don't have that kind of labor pool or capacity is one thing. But we have thousands of highly skilled, high educated software developers right here in the US. Apple, do the right thing and keep those jobs here. You have NO excuse!

I don't like this at all. When a company outsources programming to a country with inexpensive labour you can't help but lose a bit of your culture, philosophy, and even reliability in the process.

Unlike the workers at Foxconn who do an unpleasant and repetitive menial task all day you can't write code on an assembly line. A programmer is a thinker. They are not doing something repetitive otherwise that task could be had by a simple computer program. The best case scenario for farming is in bug testing but even that has potential pitfalls.

edit: I fond this:

Why Some Software Companies are Confusing the Box for the Chocolates
But writing innovative software cannot be done on an assembly line. It requires hard-to-find development and design skills. Farming out development to legions of programmers overseas will not create a differentiation advantage. When a technology company outsources software development, that company loses its capacity to innovate and its competitive advantage.

edit 2: Of course, if India is the next big market for Apple after China which is the reason for the push and they are finding great programmers, not just cheap programmers, then I withdrawal my complaints. That said, it sure doesn't read that way to me.

I figured you'd complain even harder after reading "loses its capacity to innovate"

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

Trickle down has failed. Apple doesn't outsource heavily...even 100 million today is a sneeze and quadrupling that isn't that big of a deal as compared to manufacturing in China but at some point the US Government has to stick to their guns and start taxing appropriately

I second that notion.

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

Trickle down has failed. Apple doesn't outsource heavily...even 100 million today is a sneeze and quadrupling that isn't that big of a deal as compared to manufacturing in China but at some point the US Government has to stick to their guns and start taxing appropriately

"Our" government that is openly - and legally - bought by multinationals is the one making these policies. Republican or Democrat, they only care enough to play lip service to try to win elections. From Nixon on, the policy has essentially shifted to pushing jobs away from here. People can blame Obama or Bush as though it's a party issue, but Clinton and Bush I were also heavily into it.

First blue collar manufacturing, then white collar work has gone. Of course my favorite joke about it was Bush explaining that people without jobs should use tax credits (offsetting an income of 0???) go back to community college to get advanced degrees in biotech since that's where all the new jobs were going to be. Uh-huh, right. Because it would be impossible to outsource/offshore biotech, right? No, wait...

Corporations can increase their profits, and as they point out, they're not in it to do what's right for the people. Unfortunately, neither are most politicians.

There's nothing to say. If corporations paid their fair share like we're forced to do the US would be in great shape.

I'm not for double-taxing companies, but it's exactly that - if they keep money overseas and move jobs overseas, they don't pay workers here who would pay taxes and they don't pay taxes on their own profits because of tax shell games. Win-win for them, anyway.

Are you also not in favor of not 'outsourcing' our need for petroleum products, and instead, drilling locally? (And if we can't/won't, then you agree to live without the internal combustion engine?)

How about not 'outsourcing' for our need for German/Japanese cars, but make them here instead? (And, if we don't/can't, would you only drive one made in the USA with fully USA-made parts?)

Why 'outsource' for components such as casings, glass, semiconductors? It they won't be made here, would you not consume the products (such as iPods, iPads, Macs, iPhones) that use such imported components?

Why are not these - I could add dozens more - examples of 'failed trickle down'? Because they suit your lifestyle?

I'd happily live without the combustion engine.

Many German/Japanese cars are built in the US.

The glass on iDevices is made in the US.

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

I'm not for double-taxing companies, but it's exactly that - if they keep money overseas and move jobs overseas, they don't pay workers here who would pay taxes and they don't pay taxes on their own profits because of tax shell games. Win-win for them, anyway.

I'm not even talking about double-taxing. Many corporations pay almost zero federal tax on money earned here.

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

I don't like this at all. When a company outsources programming to a country with inexpensive labour you can't help but lose a bit of your culture, philosophy, and even reliability in the process.

Unlike the workers at Foxconn who do an unpleasant and repetitive menial task all day you can't write code on an assembly line. A programmer is a thinker. They are not doing something repetitive otherwise that task could be had by a simple computer program. The best case scenario for farming is in bug testing but even that has potential pitfalls.

edit: I fond this:

Why Some Software Companies are Confusing the Box for the Chocolates
But writing innovative software cannot be done on an assembly line. It requires hard-to-find development and design skills. Farming out development to legions of programmers overseas will not create a differentiation advantage. When a technology company outsources software development, that company loses its capacity to innovate and its competitive advantage.

edit 2: Of course, if India is the next big market for Apple after China which is the reason for the push and they are finding great programmers, not just cheap programmers, then I withdrawal my complaints. That said, it sure doesn't read that way to me.

I don't think Apple is outsourcing software development just because of cheap labor. India has the reputation of having the best programmers on the planet. I definitely think all the software design should strictly be kept where it is done today. Where as ome of the actual code wrighting may as well be performed in India.

What a busy week! It's a good thing Tim Cook has truthfully told us how "Apple takes working conditions very, very seriously, and [has] for a long time." And what could be more obvious? Certainly no company achieves a $100B surplus without being serious about these things for an extended period. It takes time, thought, planning, and passion to establish a huge manufacturing base in places which - unlike the collapsing empire I live in - regard "human rights" as a notion on par with "virgin birth."

Having a large, entitled, passively unemployed population mad for a product built by vast numbers of people who can't afford to own it is a veritable tour de force of long-term seriousness. I'll applaud just as soon as I stop retching.

Here's to the corporation, the dominant institution of our time and the finest flower of mass psychosis! God is (thank God) dead, the state is a wholly owned subsidiary of ToxiCo, and the relatively small portion of humanity which has the opportunity to know better is too busy watching some dour woman made of plastic and anger joylessly mime sex in the midst of a mock-war where 300 lb. drug addicts are paid vast fortunes to concuss each other's brains until they become a danger to themselves and their spouses.

What a busy week! It's a good thing Tim Cook has truthfully told us how "Apple takes working conditions very, very seriously, and [has] for a long time." And what could be more obvious? Certainly no company achieves a $100B surplus without being serious about these things for an extended period. It takes time, thought, planning, and passion to establish a huge manufacturing base in places which - unlike the collapsing empire I live in - regard "human rights" as a notion on par with "virgin birth."

Having a large, entitled, passively unemployed population mad for a product built by vast numbers of people who can't afford to own it is a veritable tour de force of long-term seriousness. I'll applaud just as soon as I stop retching.

Here's to the corporation, the dominant institution of our time and the finest flower of mass psychosis! God is (thank God) dead, the state is a wholly owned subsidiary of ToxiCo, and the relatively small portion of humanity which has the opportunity to know better is too busy watching some dour woman made of plastic and anger joylessly mime sex in the midst of a mock-war where 300 lb. drug addicts are paid vast fortunes to concuss each other's brains until they become a danger to themselves and their spouses.

Thank God for ToxiCo, I just don't feel right when my mercury and lead levels are low.

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

What a busy week! It's a good thing Tim Cook has truthfully told us how "Apple takes working conditions very, very seriously, and [has] for a long time." And what could be more obvious? Certainly no company achieves a $100B surplus without being serious about these things for an extended period. It takes time, thought, planning, and passion to establish a huge manufacturing base in places which - unlike the collapsing empire I live in - regard "human rights" as a notion on par with "virgin birth."

Having a large, entitled, passively unemployed population mad for a product built by vast numbers of people who can't afford to own it is a veritable tour de force of long-term seriousness. I'll applaud just as soon as I stop retching.

Here's to the corporation, the dominant institution of our time and the finest flower of mass psychosis! God is (thank God) dead, the state is a wholly owned subsidiary of ToxiCo, and the relatively small portion of humanity which has the opportunity to know better is too busy watching some dour woman made of plastic and anger joylessly mime sex in the midst of a mock-war where 300 lb. drug addicts are paid vast fortunes to concuss each other's brains until they become a danger to themselves and their spouses.

Great writing. Keep it up!

I don't necessarily agree with everything that was said, but the quality of the writing more than made it worth reading

Don't worry my feeling won't be hurt. I have no political ambitions and realize
the nothing as as cut and dry as it would appear but at many levels we have not
created opportunities for the US in manufacturing.

I know people that are steering away from Engineering and Comp Sci majors simply because
the "there aren't enough qualified US citizens to hire" coming from companies becomes a
self fulfilling prophecy as students begin to avoid areas that are easily outsourced.

This is turning in "Which came first, chicken or egg" type debate. Here is what I can tell you. Companies want to save resources, be it time, money or others. It's easier to hire a US citizen than it is to hire a non-US citizen who needs sponsorship for work permit.

If you want to know why people are turning away from Engineering and Comp Sci, one need look no further than our schooling. High school education has died. Students' math skills have been on the decline for years, partly due to the advent of calculators. So much emphasis is being given to soft skills like communication that people are losing sight of skills that are just as important like solid arithmetic.

Combine that with the increasing numbers of people majoring in fields such as business, economics, and liberal arts and decreasing numbers of US high school graduates going into engineering and other hard sciences.

As an Indian, who went to one of the best CS schools in US, I abhor Indian IT companies. Not so much because of what they do, or who works there, but because they bring a bad name to Indians everywhere, and back home people cannot see much difference between people who do 'coolie' tech jobs or those who do hardcore research. In short, I am not in favor of them from any perspective.

But to play the devil's advocate I wonder that whether same argument that some use here to defend Foxconn jobs does not apply to Indian IT companies? The Foxconn jobs are too shitty for Americans, and it is not a big deal if they leave America. Is that not true for Indian IT outsourcing jobs? No self-respecting engineer in US or India would like to do that kind of work.

Disclaimer: I live in US, and worked with/ know professors whose work contributed directly to various Apple products ranging from OS X/ NeXTSTEP to Siri. So I am squarely on your side.

But to play the devil's advocate I wonder that whether same argument that some use here to defend Foxconn jobs does not apply to Indian IT companies? The Foxconn jobs are too shitty for Americans, and it is not a big deal if they leave America. Is that not true for Indian IT outsourcing jobs? No self-respecting engineer in US or India would like to do that kind of work.

In my experience, yes this has often been the case - offshore contractor developers get the bug fixes, while fulltime developers get to build the new functionality.

I also agree that India has plenty of talented developers - but you'll find them working fulltime for Cisco/Amazon/etc., not for some crap place like Infosys.

Manufacturing something overseas because we don't have that kind of labor pool or capacity is one thing. But we have thousands of highly skilled, high educated software developers right here in the US. Apple, do the right thing and keep those jobs here. You have NO excuse!

Apple is an institution, not - whatever the elected officials such institutions purchase would have us believe - a person. It's what every corporation was designed to be: an amoral profit machine the sole purpose of which is to enable those with wealth to accumulate more of the same. As such, it doesn't need an excuse. All it or any company needs is an opportunity, and in a system where legislators and law are for sale, such opportunity requires nothing more than a line item in the government relations budget.

A corporation is the cultural equivalent of a chain saw a very powerful economic tool guaranteed to cause fatal damage to any society that fails to use it with sufficient safety procedures. Sadly, it's the dominant institution of our time and it's been quite awhile since the 1% got tired of suffering constraints as to where they can swing it.

The outsourcing of jobs in the midst of mass unemployment is just an awkward stage America is going through. All that work will come right back home just as soon as Americans are numerous and desperate enough to abandon our silly notions about rights and quality of life. We're nearly there already The term "middle class" already invokes a quaint, "Father Knows Best" nostalgia. 95% of the current work force is engaged in a trend of doing more for less than will won't stop short of death. We're raising a generation which will lack the knowledge necessary for anything beyond sweatshop labor, and - more to the point - is growing up without witnessing any alternative other than that presented by the rich, beautiful fantasy people on the screen that keeps everyone quietly slogging in harness.

Will the next version of Mac OS X come with a built in Indian accent? It's not enough that I have to speak with somebody with an Indian accent whenever I call certain US companies who are greedy bastards and they outsource their support lines to foreigners who speak piss poor English that sounds like gibberish half of the time?

A lot of the recently insourced call centers don't speak the Queen's English with a perfect accent either. They have thick (often strongly Southern) accents that I can barely understand.

Yeah, a small portion of their global output. Often in super automated assembly lines (with outsourced components), located in the South, in right-to-work states (nothing wrong with that). Many senior managers I've spoken to in this industry complain about the less-than-great quality of US manual labor, as a result of which there is a tendency toward heavy automation.

By the same token, all the large IT companies from India - TCS, Infosys, Wipro - have a pretty impressive presence in the US. I am not talking about their sending over cheap Indian labor either: they employ significant amounts of US citizens here. Indeed, I am wiling to bet (I'll need to do more research to prove this), a company such as Infosys or TCS has a higher proportion of their global labor force located in the US compared to BMW, Toyota, VW, or Daimler-Benz.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasanman69

The glass on iDevices is made in the US.

Really? Care to provide some evidence?

Most of the glass comes from Corning. While they still have some manufacturing here, a vast majority of their glass is produced in Asia.

Steve Jobs Rest his soul would NEVER NEVER NEVER approved of this what the hell is APPLE thinking.. they will just become like everyone else which is what Jobs spent a car rear avoiding. Not being like everyone else but a company who stands OUT.
Tim Cook and his boys SUCK you do this and it all goes downhill

Apple is an institution, not - whatever the elected officials such institutions purchase would have us believe - a person. It's what every corporation was designed to be: an amoral profit machine the sole purpose of which is to enable those with wealth to accumulate more of the same. As such, it doesn't need an excuse. All it or any company needs is an opportunity, and in a system where legislators and law are for sale, such opportunity requires nothing more than a line item in the government relations budget.

A corporation is the cultural equivalent of a chain saw a very powerful economic tool guaranteed to cause fatal damage to any society that fails to use it with sufficient safety procedures. Sadly, it's the dominant institution of our time and it's been quite awhile since the 1% got tired of suffering constraints as to where they can swing it.

The outsourcing of jobs in the midst of mass unemployment is just an awkward stage America is going through. All that work will come right back home just as soon as Americans are numerous and desperate enough to abandon our silly notions about rights and quality of life. We're nearly there already The term "middle class" already invokes a quaint, "Father Knows Best" nostalgia. 95% of the current work force is engaged in a trend of doing more for less than will won't stop short of death. We're raising a generation which will lack the knowledge necessary for anything beyond sweatshop labor, and - more to the point - is growing up without witnessing any alternative other than that presented by the rich, beautiful fantasy people on the screen that keeps everyone quietly slogging in harness.

Steve Jobs Rest his soul would NEVER NEVER NEVER approved of this what the hell is APPLE thinking.. they will just become like everyone else which is what Jobs spent a car rear avoiding. Not being like everyone else but a company who stands OUT.
Tim Cook and his boys SUCK you do this and it all goes downhill

I have just returned from India and buying Apple products in India is pretty much impossible. The only Apple store of note was the excellent iStore in Bangalore. They did not have the iPad camera connection kit I was after, but I did buy Isaacson's Jobs' biography for 800 rs ($16). (A store in Mumbai was selling them for $13, and not the fake 400 rs versions either.)

Apple stores are of course great, but India seems to have a completely different outlet system. I tried looking for Apple products (iPhone) in Madurai. I was directed to a market area, where every little shop sold mobiles (about 100 of them). Some had second-hand iPhones, but that was it. Indian's love these chaotic stalls.

Lots of Samsung being sold, even with pictures of the Apple iPhone (complete with Apple logo) with the Samsung label underneath!

I did find some more up-market shops where iPhone was being sold, but for 43,000 rs, around $860, which is more than in the US and even Australia.

Before one criticises India too much, it should be realised, it is the ultimate in capitalism and competition, and this pretty much results in chaos and confusion for the consumer. Hence companies that can tap into this chaos and confusion win. Cheap products (and I mean cheap and nasty) products are easily sold into such a marketplace, and high-quality products are the preserve of the high-end of town.

Apple needs to get its products out to the masses in countries like India.

By the same token, all the large IT companies from India - TCS, Infosys, Wipro - have a pretty impressive presence in the US. I am not talking about their sending over cheap Indian labor either: they employ significant amounts of US citizens here. Indeed, I am wiling to bet (I'll need to do more research to prove this), a company such as Infosys or TCS has a higher proportion of their global labor force located in the US compared to BMW, Toyota, VW, or Daimler-Benz.

Please do not defend Indian IT employees. They do extremely trivial stuff, the kind the AI/ NLP programs we used to have fun with in gradschool will hopefully replace in the next decade or so. More so, Indian IT people are indeed very unpleasant/ narrow minded to talk to, their world view is medieval, their English so pathetic, that even as an Indian I cannot properly communicate with them if their mother tongue is not the same as mine- limited vocabulary/ literal mindedness. Sure, I can have the same problem with a foreign taxi driver, but at least his world view is interesting, and he does not think that doing trivial maintenance (mechanical or otherwise) makes him better.

Indian IT people do trivial work. Does not automatically make them indispensable, but I would fathom moderately trained Mexican blue collar workers can do that as well.

Disclaimer: Born and brought up in India. See the earlier posted message.

It will be an especially bad sign if software positions in the US are cut, either through layoffs or attrition.

I've worked with Wipro, and while there are some nice people there, the technology standards of the company are dismal. Development and security were particularly bad. I will point out that the company is very large, and my experience was with one account. However, most of my horror stories were the same as other people I knew who worked with them.

Further, the development costs were actually very high if measured per unit output of functionality, as opposed to cost per hour. Essentially there were no savings at all. Apple is in California and this means working with people who are 11.5 time zones away. If they are willing to stay at work till midnight, they are by definition not the best available talent.

Is the Tim Cook way? I hope not, but I would not be surprised. Certainly he has no insight whatsoever into the software development process.

Please do not defend Indian IT employees. They do extremely trivial stuff, the kind the AI/ NLP programs we used to have fun with in gradschool will hopefully replace in the next decade or so. More so, Indian IT people are indeed very unpleasant/ narrow minded to talk to, their world view is medieval, their English so pathetic, that even as an Indian I cannot properly communicate with them if their mother tongue is not the same as mine- limited vocabulary/ literal mindedness. Sure, I can have the same problem with a foreign taxi driver, but at least his world view is interesting, and he does not think that doing trivial maintenance (mechanical or otherwise) makes him better.

Indian IT people do trivial work. Does not automatically make them indispensable, but I would fathom moderately trained Mexican blue collar workers can do that as well.

Disclaimer: Born and brought up in India. See the earlier posted message.

I could care less about where you're born and brought up. In any event, stop apologizing.

My post had nothing to with 'defending' Indian IT employees. I was talking about the presence of Indian IT companies in the US, compared to auto manufacturers.

Your level of comprehension is about as good as that of the 'Indian IT employees' about whom you complain.

Tim Cook ... has no insight whatsoever into the software development process.

That laughably stupid assertion - from some internet dude who thinks he knows more than a person with Tim Cook's background, experience, grooming, and responsibilities - is sufficient to invalidate just about everything you've said.

I'm to be convinced that we have quality programmers in any parts of the world in sufficient numbers. Lots of code is written in C++, which is one of the worst programming languages ever invented. In fact, still too much low-level C code exists. Objective-C is the best version of C, but even that is still hampered by C roots.

Still programmers hang on to these stone-age C-based tools (which is an assembler dressed in HLL syntax). We need more programmers trained in minimal and elegant languages like LISP, Algol, and for OO Smalltalk and Eiffel (for two different ends of the OO spectrum). But as David Parnas has observed, many programmers think that they are producing good code by writing in OO languages, and yet fail to design modules with clean and elegant interfaces.

This illusion is even worse when people produce UML diagrams (the C++ of diagramming techniques).

Parnas also has a 2002 update called The Secret History of Information Hiding, which I can't find in pdf right now (it is at ACM). He coined the phrase information hiding, which armies of C++ programmers think means hiding module data behind get and set functions, but that is not what is meant by information hiding.

As Parnas observes, it is not the quantity of programmers that is the problem, it is the quality.

People forget that outsourcing enables US companies to hire US workers.

Cut manufacturing in China?
Well Apple would lose its global competitiveness, which would result in poor sales, and Apple would be forced to downsize. Apple using China as a resource enables to to hire more American workers.

Now, the same thing can be said of hiring people in india. Apple can supplement their American work force with people in India. That doesn't mean that Apple is replacing workers in the United States. Apple could be creating jobs in india that would have never been created in the United Sates to being with.

Your level of comprehension is about as good as that of the 'Indian IT employees' about whom you complain.

Sure, it was my annoyance, and a little bit too much Pastis that was speaking. I could guess your your ancestry from your username, and I automatically assumed that you were defending them, which many nationalistic Indians do.

All the experience I have in outsourcing results in this : its better to outsource in rural towns of youre own country than to another country.

We have no problem at all with our divisions in Sherbrooke and Alma (Quebec, Canada) and the labor cost is still reduce by 30% compare to Montreal. On top of it programmers love it, some are able to live in the country while doing an hi tech job.